


All Dead, All Gone.

by preraphhobbit



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Other, Retrospective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 13:26:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preraphhobbit/pseuds/preraphhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Very short, very angsty drabble in which Jon Snow ruminates on the fiery girl he once knew and loved. Set after the events of 'A Storm of Swords', so major spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Dead, All Gone.

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic, more of a painful drabble actually, so be gentle. Major character death spoken of but doesn't actually happen in it. Tries to stay as canon as possible.

It seems like the nights are the worst, when the wind climbs up and over the Wall and curls icy claws around Castle Black's towers. He can hear the wind like screams in the roof, hear the soft moaning of the walls as they creak against the cold. He sits in silence, with Ghost at his feet and a lamp at his elbow, staring into the orange heart of the flame until it sears his eyes with it's brightness and makes stars explode in his vision, and then the stars melt into memories and he is sent hurtling back into the dark corridors of the past.

So many faces to remember- his father's, stern and proud even of his bastard son, his half-brother, always with a grin and a spring to his step, even Lady Stark's, and the hard twist to her mouth that condescended his every movement, her eyes leaking contempt. All dead now, all lost. He thinks of Arya's high and joyful voice, the featherweight of her body as she hung off his neck. He would mess her hair and teach her to fight. Sansa, Bran, Rickon- little brothers and sisters, Sansa who treated with silent ignorance, Rickon with his wild eyes, Bran climbing towers and always fancying himself bigger than he was. Alive or dead, wherever they were, they were all gone to him, all lost. Then there were the others, lads he knew from the Watch- his brothers, really- Ser Jeor and Qhorin- his fathers, his friends. Dead, gone. Men who's blood he'd seen spilled, men who's blood he'd spilled with his own sword. Dead. All of them. Beyond the touch of life and human hands now.

And her.

Her lips and her hair were both like fire, but one seared his soul when it touched him and the other only looked like it would. Still he could remember the heat of her skin under his palms, the touch of her rough fingers digging into his naked shoulder, the hard insistence of her mouth on his. Even the smell of her still stayed with him, dusky and smoky. Underneath her furs her body was small and wiry. He could remember the weight of her, and touch and warmth and sweetness and the way her coppery hair tangled hopelessly in his fingers.

The smell of oil from his lantern makes him feel stifled, and so he stands and finds his cloak and goes to the top of the wall, clutching his lantern to guide his way along the icy track, Ghost at his heels like a pale shadow. Sometimes, when the memories are too much, filling him up so that it feels like his chest might break apart and spill out, he does this, the way he would when he was still young and inexperienced. He walks and ruminates. So much has changed from the first time he walked the wall. He'd been weak and young then, his skin and his soul still unscarred. Now his heart has a scar and there was another in his leg, a permanent reminder of her, as if he needed one. He lifts his face to the hard throb of the wind, blowing down on him from the north, bringing a fine spray of hard snow that needles his bare cheeks, and wishes the way it makes his face numb would spread to his heart. Memories hurt more than life, he thinks. 

He raises his lantern, lets the snowy wind tease the flame. It makes the ice of the wall glow under his feet, but the darkness beyond and below him swallows the light. He shivers, thinking of the long cold dark of winter and the glowing eyes that lurk in it. The snow blasts the lantern, almost snuffing the flame. 

It's funny, though. As much as he can remember her fire, the heat of her skin and her words and her kisses, that is not what he remembers the most. What he remembers the most is the fire going out of her, fading, growing cold. He can remember her breath, slowing until it ceased, and the stickiness of her blood on his hands, as good as though he'd killed her himself. He wonders, for the ten thousandth time, if he would have told the black brothers of the wildlings' approach if he knew what would have happened to her. He wonders if he would have left her, if he would have gone with her to Mance. Perhaps he might have given up knowing her at all, if it meant he could know that somewhere in the wild white waste beyond the wall, a girl with flames in her eye and her hair still lived and breathed and spoke and shouted and loved, a girl named Ygritte who could go on and live and never know of him or of death until it came to her quietly, in old age. But she was dead, and a man cannot go chance the past. 

It made him turn as cold as the snow that was his surname, thinking of it, and in the moan of the wind he thinks, for a moment, he can almost hear her voice.

"You know nothing, Jon Snow."

The snow in the wind doused the flame in his lantern, and he stood in the darkness, remembering. All gone, all lost.


End file.
